by Shakespeare
CHAPTER 41
Doth Rauish Like
Inchaunting Harmonie
The Lord Chamberlain’s Men began performing in June 1594, but before that date Shakespeare had completed his second long narrative poem. The Rape of Lucrece may have been written at Titchfield, while the writer was working under the auspices of the Earl of Southampton, and it is in any case dedicated to the young earl in effusive terms. “The loue I dedicate to your Lordship,” Shakespeare writes, “is without end.” He goes on to claim that “what I haue done is yours, what I haue to doe is yours, being part in all I haue, deuoted yours.” What he had “done” was to compose a poem on the rape of Lucrece, the wife of Collatine, by Sextus Tarquinius. The mythical event is dated 509 BC, and has been used as an explanation for the rise of the Roman Republic. Shakespeare obtained his theme from the Fasti of Ovid and from the Roman history of Livy. They were standard grammar-school texts with which he was well acquainted. There is no direct copying of Ovid’s Latin, however. He takes the plot but not the poetry. This suggests one method by which he worked. He took up a copy of the Fasti, read it quickly, and then put it down without further reference to it. He needed only the raw materials to excite his imagination.
The history is not, however, what interests the poet. Shakespeare is concerned with the play of feeling between the two protagonists, as Tarquin prepares himself to rape the lady and then, after the deed, slinks away. The poem is chiefly remarkable for Lucrece’s sorrowful meditations after the event, in the course of which she determines to kill herself in front of her husband. The energy and fluency of Shakespeare’s verse are again immediately apparent. The poem, like his drama, begins in medias res with a rushing speed and it maintains its dramatic momentum throughout. He even introduces the word “Actor” into the proceedings. Shakespeare renders everything instinct with palpitating life. The Rape of Lucrece is extravagant in diction, elaborate in cadence, filled with paradoxes and oppositions, epithets and exclamations, conceits and images; it has a vaunting rhythm and an arresting rhyme-scheme. It is, in other words, a high-spirited performance in which Shakespeare displays all of his excitement and eloquence. Once more the pleasure of the reader is equalled only by the pleasure of the writer.
The general movement of Shakespeare’s dramatic verse can be characterised as one from formal regularity to irregularity. Rhymes, for example, become much less common. In his later plays, too, he pitches the natural stress of English speech against the melodious form of the iambic pentameter; he introduces parentheses, exclamations and “run on” lines that continue the cadence past its usual conclusion. He will also complete a sentence in the middle of the line, with a caesura, thus imitating the more irregular and disjunctive passages of thought and expression within his characters. There has been traced a characteristic curve in Shakespeare’s composition, a rhythmic evolution that reflects the unceasing development of the music of his being. As Pasternak observed, “rhythm is the basis of Shakespeare’s texts”;1 he composed, and imagined, in cadences; his head was filled with cadences, waiting to be born.
The Rape of Lucrece can also be seen as a mine of gold for Shakespeare’s later dramas; he becomes fascinated by the idea of the unquiet conscience and by the murder of innocence. The poem may also be the forerunner of murders in the bed, among them those of Duncan and Desdemona. The musings of Tarquin, the rapist, might almost be read as the inner history of Richard III for which there is no space on the stage. It is the procedure of the great writer – Shakespeare knew what interested him, and what preoccupied him, only after he had written it down.
The dedication of Lucrece may solve a problem concerning Shakespeare’s financial status at this time. Where did he obtain the £50 that was needed as his premium to become a “sharer” in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men? Much of his income must by now have travelled back to Stratford in order to support a wife and young family. It may be that the fee was waived on the understanding that he would write a certain number of plays each year; he may have bequeathed to the Lord Chamberlain’s Men the ownership of the plays he had already written. Or he may have been lent or given the money. There is a report by Nicholas Rowe that “my Lord Southampton, at one time, gave him a thousand Pounds, to enable him to go through with a Purchase which he heard he had a mind to.” Rowe had acquired the story from one “who was probably very well acquainted with his Affairs.”2 Southampton was notably generous, but the sum seems extravagant even by his profligate standards. There is no indication that Shakespeare ever possessed, or invested, so large an amount of money at any one time. In fact “a thousand pounds” is a conventionally hyperbolic expression used by Shakespeare himself; it is the sum Falstaff believes that he will receive after Hal’s coronation. We may conjecture a figure nearer £50 or £100. The young earl may have rewarded the author of Lucrece and Venus and Adonis with this more modest sum.
There is another intriguing connection between The Rape of Lucrece and a noble family. It has been suggested that the poem was conceived and written under the auspices – or at least under the influence – of Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke.3 She was the sister of Sir Philip Sidney, and had in direct tribute cultivated her brother’s own literary ideals within her circle. She completed his poetic rendering of the psalms, and was herself a notable translator. She had also created an informal network of literary patronage, and under her direction three neo-classical tragedies were written or translated from the French. Mary Herbert herself translated one of them. Each of these tragedies concentrated upon the sufferings of noble heroines, among them Cleopatra and Cornelia, and in deference to Mary Herbert takes an almost “feminist” reading of women betrayed by a hostile male world. The Rape of Lucrece is very much part of this tradition. It is not otherwise clear why Shakespeare would have chosen such an apparently unpromising subject. Samuel Daniel wrote a poem, The Complaint of Rosamond, and dedicated it to the Countess of Pembroke; this poem also expresses the sorrows of a suffering woman. Shakespeare borrowed Daniel’s rhyme-royal stanza for his own narrative. In the same fashion the dramatic eloquence of Shakespeare’s poem also aligns it with the neo-classical tragedies that were part of Mary Herbert’s literary circle. So the connections are there. It should be recalled that Shakespeare was for a period a member of Pembroke’s Men, and it is known that Mary Herbert took a personal interest in the players. One of the actors named her as a trustee in his will. The association lends further significance to Shakespeare’s early sonnets, which may have been commissioned by Mary Herbert.
The Rape of Lucrece itself was almost as popular with the reading public as the earlier Venus and Adonis. It was reissued in six separate editions during Shakespeare’s lifetime, and in two after his death; in the year of its publication it is mentioned in several poems and eulogies. A university play of the period exclaims: “Who loves not Adon’s love, or Lucrece rape!” A reference in William Covell’s Polimanteia claims “Lucrecia” by “sweet Shakespeare” to be “all-praise-worthy,” and an elegy on Lady Helen Branch of 1594 includes among “our greater poets … you that have writ of chaste Lucretia.”4 “The younger sort take much delight in Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis,” Gabriel Harvey wrote, “but his Lucrece” is considered “to please the wiser sort.”5 In poetical anthologies of the period it was extensively quoted and in England’s Parnassus of 1600, for example, no fewer than thirty-nine passages were extracted for the delectation of the readers.
This in turn raises an interesting, if unanswerable, question. Why at the age of thirty did Shakespeare effectively give up his career as a poet and turn back to play-writing? From the extensive comment and praise that he received for his two narrative poems, his future and fame as England’s principal poet would seem to be assured; in one essay on the English tongue, written in 1595, he is placed in the same company as Chaucer and Spenser. But he chose another path. Perhaps he considered that his life with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men offered him financial security, away from the perilous world of private patronage; i
n this, his judgement proved to be correct. As Jonson wrote in The Poetaster, “Name me a profest poet, that his poetrie did ever afford so much as a competencie.” Shakespeare wanted more than a “competency.” In any case he loved the work of acting and play-writing at the heart of his own company. Otherwise he would not have chosen to continue it.
Yet the larger reason must reside in the promptings of his own genius; his instinct and judgement informed him that drama was his peculiar skill and particular speciality. Attention must also be paid to the urgency of his literary ambition and inventiveness. He had already excelled at stage comedy, at melodrama and at history. Where else might his genius take him? He knew well enough that he could write poetic narratives with ease and fluency, but the form did not challenge him in the same fundamental way as the newly emerging drama. As Donne said in a private letter, “The Spanish proverb informes me, that he is a fool which cannot make one Sonnet, and he is mad which makes two.”6 He may have found it just too easy, which is perhaps why he carries his poetic effects to excess and why in Venus and Adonis he interleaves lyrical pathos with deliberate farce. He was even then beginning a sonnet sequence that would test the medium to breaking point, but it was not enough. He could perhaps have settled for a life as a “gentleman-poet,” like Michael Drayton, but that also was not enough.
CHAPTER 42
To Fill the World with Words
Soon after the formation of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men Shakespeare and his fellows began a shared run with the Lord Admiral’s Men at the playhouse in Newington Butts. This association with their principal rivals did not last for long; it was a very wet summer and the takings were low. After about ten days the Lord Admiral’s Men decamped to the Rose.
The unique position of the two companies in the Elizabethan theatre of course created competition and rivalry. When the Lord Chamberlain’s Men put on Shakespeare’s plays of Richard III and Henry V, the Lord Admiral’s Men retaliated with Richard Crookback and their own version of Henry the Fifth. The Admiral’s Men performed The Famous Wars of Henry the First as a crowd-puller to rival Shakespeare’s episodes of Henry IV. When that was not successful they tried once more with The True and Honourable History of the Life of Sir John Oldcastle, an echo of Falstaff’s original name of Oldcastle. But the traffic was not always in one direction. When the Lord Admiral’s Men staged at least seven plays on biblical subjects, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men replied with Hester and Ahasuerus and other similar dramas. The Admiral’s Men performed two plays on the life of Cardinal Wolsey at the Rose, a theme that Shakespeare would later take up in All Is True; the Admiral’s Men also played a version of Troilus and Cressida at the same theatre, before Shakespeare had written his own variation upon an identical theme. While one group had The Merry Wives of Windsor, the other staged a drama concerning the wives of Abingdon. Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness vied at the Rose with Othello at the Globe, and they were no doubt viewed in the same light by the audiences who went from one theatre to the other. Two plays on the subject of Robin Hood, written by Munday and Chettle, were proving very popular at the Rose in 1598; Shakespeare retaliated with the sylvan romance As You Like It. So there was a constant cross-fertilisation of themes and ideas between the companies, fuelled by fashion and inspired by rivalry. The success of Hamlet provoked the Lord Admiral’s Men into reviving another revenge drama, The Spanish Tragedy, with special additions written by Ben Jonson. The popularity of Shakespeare’s play in fact unleashed a whole sequence of imitations such as Hoffman, or A Revenge for a Father and The Atheist’s Tragedy, or The Honest Man’s Revenge. It was not unusual for playgoers to attend the various productions of these theatrical rivals, and compare notes on their respective strengths. Was Burbage superior to Alleyn in such-and-such a role? Was Mr. Shakespeare – he had become “Mr.” on the playbills when he became a “sharer”-as excellent as Kyd?
After appearing at Newington Butts the Lord Chamberlain’s Men toured parts of the country, including Wiltshire and Berkshire, before returning to London for the winter season. On 8 October Lord Hunsdon, their patron, wrote to the Lord Mayor requesting him to allow his servants to play in the City; his new company were already at the Cross Keys in Gracechurch Street, and he wished to prolong their engagement. It is curious that they were not using the Theatre or the Curtain, but it is likely either that the playhouses were in a state of disrepair or that they were not considered suitable venues for the darker winter season. Hunsdon promised that they would begin at two in the afternoon rather than at four, and that they would use no drums or trumpets to advertise their presence. The Lord Mayor and his colleagues gave way to the Lord Chamberlain’s wishes, but this was the last time that any playing company ever used a city inn. The Lord Chamberlain’s Men also performed at court this winter, and played on two occasions before Elizabeth; on 26 and 28 December they attended her at her palace in Greenwich.
The actors did not simply arrive, with their costumes and instruments. They first had to rehearse the plays intended for Her Majesty’s pleasure before the Master of the Revels, Edmund Tilney. His suite of apartments and offices was in the former Hospital of St. John in Clerkenwell; by one of those strange coincidences of London life, Clerkenwell had once been the site of the London mystery plays. Since the company performed at the playhouses during the afternoon, these royal rehearsals must have taken place early in the morning or late at night. The chandler’s bill for the Office of the Revels records large payments for candles, coal and firewood. Tilney would act as censor, removing those lines that might be indelicate or offensive to the royal ear. He also loaned the company more sumptuous costumes if they were needed; at the court, some of their dresses and cloaks might have seemed threadbare. There are references to the actors borrowing “the monarch’s gown,” to save embarrassment before the great original, and “armor for knightly combatants” in case they were ridiculed by the more martial courtiers. The Master of the Revels also lent them “apt houses made of canvas,”“necessaries for hunters” and “a device for thunder and lightning.”1
When all was settled they took a boat downriver from one of the London wharves or “stairs,” with an attendant barge for their costumes and devices. The great hall at Greenwich had been cleared for the performance; the stage was at one end, decked out with perspective scenery devised by the Office of the Revels, and the royal dais was at the other. The hall, on this later winter afternoon and evening, was illuminated by candles and torches. The musicians were placed on the wooden balcony above the stage, and the actors could use the passage behind the screen as their “tiring-room.” The audience, invited at royal discretion, assembled in their formal robes before the arrival of the queen herself. It was the most fashionable entertainment of the year, and it would have been natural for Shakespeare and his fellows to experience a little nervousness. The names of the plays they performed on this occasion are not recorded, but it has been suggested that the queen witnessed Love’s Labour’s Lost as well as Romeo and Juliet. What better fillip for an ageing queen than tales of young lovers?
The Lord Chamberlain’s Men were a success, and became something of a royal favourite. The extant records show that on this first occasion the Lord Admiral’s Men performed three times, and the Lord Chamberlain’s Men played twice, but in later years the Lord Chamberlain’s Men were called more often. In the winter season of 1596 and 1597, for example, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men played six times and the Lord Admiral’s Men did not appear at all. A reference to William Shakespeare occurs in the payment for the royal entertainment at Greenwich in 1594, when £20 was granted to “William Kemp, William Shakespeare and Richard Burbage” for “two comedies showed before Her Majesty in Christmas time last.” It is an indication of Shakespeare’s seniority in the company that he should be listed before the principal actor – unless, of course, he was the principal actor. It suggests in any case that he was a leading member at the time of its inception, and already active in the company’s business. The entry in the treas
urer’s account has the distinction of being the only official reference to Shakespeare’s connection with the stage.
On the night of the last day they performed at Greenwich, 28 December 1594, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men also gave a performance of The Comedy of Errors in the hall of Gray’s Inn. The play was part of the Christmas revels of that Inn, presided over by a lord of misrule known as “the Prince of Purpoole.” Shakespeare may have been chosen as the dramatist through his association with Southampton; Southampton was a member of Gray’s Inn. The play of twins and of mistaken identity, with all the complications of evidence involved, was naturally popular among students of the English law. For the purposes of the Inn, Shakespeare also revised The Comedy of Errors. He introduced more legalisms and two trial scenes. A special stage had been built for the production, as well as “Scaffolds to be reared to the top of the House, to increase Expectation.” So there was to be an element of spectacle in the proceedings. But the play hardly received a fair hearing. The numbers of invited guests were so large, and the event so badly managed, that the entertainments had to be curtailed. The senior members of the Inner Temple, who had been invited by their colleagues, left the hall “discontented and displeased”; spectators then invaded the stage to the obvious detriment of the players. A report in Gesta Grayorum concludes that “that Night was begun, and continued to the end, in nothing but Confusion and Errors; whereupon it was ever afterwards called, The Night of Errors”. Two days later the members held a “mock trial,” one of the enduring features of the Inns, at which “a Company of base and common Fellows” from “Shoreditch” was berated for making up “our Disorders with a Play of Errors and Confusions.”2 It was not a serious rebuke, and the allusion to the “base and common” actors is an arch legal joke. The person blamed for the fiasco was in fact a member and “orator” of the Inn, Francis Bacon, a keen spectator of the drama and a writer sometimes deemed to have composed Shakespeare’s plays himself. The contemporaneity of the two men has itself led to “nothing but confusion and errors.” Shakespeare has been accused of writing Bacon, and Bacon accused of writing Shakespeare, while a third party has been held responsible for the productions of both men.